The following is a work of speculation. I have no specific data showing this is true. It is just a possible ‘what if” sort of story. If it pans out as true, well, some speculation is more astute than others. Continue reading Seeds of self-destruction→

Got out of the house for a little while today, went to Costco. Outside was a queue, with good “social spacing” being reminded by the team of cart-wranglers who were sanitizing all the carts (particularly the push bar). They were letting people in in groups as people came out. Inside was not at all crowded – easy to keep spaced out, and 2/3 or maybe 3/4 of the people wore masks. Most of the employees didn’t. Continue reading Another shelf-report→

In this video, Rudy Giuliani interviews Dr. Vladmir Zelenko about his Wuhan Flu treatment regimen. I’m not a big fan of Rudy’s interview style (to much prosecutor-like interruption), but good info. should be qued up to the start of things, the details of his dosage is at about the 30 minute mark.

Related note on the overall mortality rate:
From https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/03/27/covid-19-and-us-mortality-by-i-ratel/

WTF? Why is the overall mortality falling? That is potentially a HUGE question that needs a well-supported answer.

In the last couple of days I’ve ordered a couple of different non-medical/food items from Amazon. One of them is now listed as “out for delivery” only a couple of days after ordering it (a better chair for my work-from-home situation). Another item shown as “in stock” is now says I should expect delivery near the end of April. A month or so. Huh. Interesting.

Other internet-only companies like NewEgg are shipping non-food items much faster, because they don’t have to prioritize groceries. Looking at current availability of items at other sites like Midway USA (guns and reloading supplies, mostly) is showing rather spotty inventory: looking at bullets, they have 800 items in stock, 748 out of stock with no backorder, and 714 “temporarily unavailable.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen the orderable : not-orderable ratio anywhere near that skewed. IIRC, it’s typically more like 3:1 rather than 1:3. On Ammo they have 694 types “available,” and 1006 as “out of stock no backorder” or “temporarily unavailable,” a 7:10 ratio. Highest I’ve seen it since, I think, the gun-run of Obama’s re-election panic.

OTOH, the news on cures/treatments for the Wuhan Flu continues to be good with respect to various combinations of hydroxychloroquine + other meds, so things should be returning to normal relatively soon.

I stopped in at a Fred Meyer (PNW chain) to pick up a few things on the way home from my sister’s place Sunday afternoon. Paper products and cleaning supplies had a lot of empty shelf space, but they were not totally out of TP. They were pretty low on some staples like eggs and milk. LOADS (numerous pallets filled in the display aisle places) of bottled water. Parking lot was less full than I expected. They had a Purel wipe dispenser by the shopping carts so you could wipe it down before use – it’s possible that it isn’t a new item and is just getting a lot more notice and use these days, it’s not a specific store I normally visit. Corona Beer was on sale. People were generally keeping reasonable distances apart.

One thing I noticed on the drive was that a lot of places were still open, contrary to expectations. Car dealerships. Espresso stands. Marijuana shops. I expected gas stations and grocery stores and restaurants (to-go only), but not an auto-parts store or oil-change place. Be interesting to know what percentage of business are claiming to be “critical infrastructure” and just being “really careful.”

One of the puzzling things about Covid-19 has been filtering through the reporting of various reports -economic, medical, political, etc.- trying to get a proper understanding of what the risks really are. But even evaluating the actual medical risks based on reported death rates has been nearly impossible to make sense of until I came across an article that reminded me of a common complicating factor in understanding gun/murder stats. Continue reading “With” versus “from”→

I expected a lot of blame throwing and politicizing of events, but the brazenness of some of it is surprising. Everywhere that has government-run healthcare (like CHINA) shortages and inefficiencies are the norm, yet when we are not at shortages YET people are already saying that it is TRUMP’S response that will result in death panels, and a government take-over of healthcare is going to be required to stave off the worst effects. When he imposed travel bans he was called racist, now that we have dead they say he could have done more (but they never really say WHAT, given the information and political reality at the time). They accuse him of being a fascists (like it’s a bad thing) while demanding the Federal government require all manufacturers to build ventilators and medical equipment, and require all healthcare facilities to have a stockpile of such things on hand (like that would be a good thing)… which is a centrally run/planed privately-owned economy… which IS FASCISM, economically-speaking! Man, the lack of self-awareness and critical thinking by some people is staggering. Continue reading A swiftly shifting world→

It’s a small change, in some ways. Big in others. I work at a small private school, and as it turns out it’s not very hard to teach a class remotely. We have had the capability to use Google Hangout or Meet to conduct classes with students who are absent because of sickness or while they are traveling, as long as they have a web connection and a web-cam (which most laptops do these days). So, most of us can carry on as before, but from home. Clean up a bit of space to use as an office background for our own webcam connection, and avoid the commute. No possible chance of contagion if they are in their home and I’m in my home office space. Every meeting can be recorded (a variety of benefits to that), and you avoid the commute (which is pretty mellow now). Labs are a bit harder, but the curriculum has dry-lab data that can be used, and some are quite possible to do in any reasonable home setting. Continue reading Working from home→

Most retail sources are out of anything even remotely useful to a bio-weapon / plague outbreak. Protective masks and tyvek suits, replacement filters, sanitizers and “roll-your-own” ingredients such as alcohol, etc., are sold out. Scalpers / arbitrage agents who bought a huge quantity hoping to resell it at a major markup are being (rightly or wrongly) shut down and pilloried in the media. Continue reading Plague Year, 02→

Being that I live near the epicenter of the Wuhan novel coronavirus (COVID19) outbreak here in the US of A, (Seattle region) I suppose it might be of interest to some people to know how things look from a local’s perspective. Continue reading The Plague Year(s)→